


The Cryptid of Stark Tower

by Ebone



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Chaos, Roombas, Science, Stark Tower, cryptid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:22:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29760975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ebone/pseuds/Ebone
Summary: The legend of the Cryptid of Stark Tower has been growing in the past year and had become widely known to all of the staff. A young boy was often spotted causing chaos at random times in random places where he shouldn't have even been able to get. There are many theories as to who he is but the largest is that he is the ghost of a child who died on a field trip to Stark Towers.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 45





	1. Introductions are in order

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this chapter is so short but this is just to set the scene. I am hoping to do four chapters where each of the other interns tells their story and then a few more after.

Kate was your, average smart college kid. She was 20 and in her third year of her bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences and she had just landed a prestigious internship at Stark Industries. Walking into the lobby of Stark Tower on her first day was overwhelming, it was a massive space with marble floors and massive chandeliers. The space was bustling, and everyone seemed to be on a mission. She quickly found the front desk and walked over. She introduced herself and told them she was there for her first day as an intern. The employee at the front desk told her to take a seat. After sitting for five minutes a young man in jeans, a t-shirt, and a lab coat walked over to her. He introduced himself as Kevin, another biomedical intern, and told her he was going to be giving her the tour. 

Every lab she saw was extraordinary so when she was finally showed the lab where she would be working, she was ecstatic. After getting to know the other interns for a few minutes they broke for lunch. All five of the biomedical interns went down to the cafeteria together. After they had all been eating for a bit one of the interns, Claire, waved them all closer to her and said, “I think it is time we tell you about the cryptid of Stark Tower, the Boy.” Kate was skeptical, she figured it was some kind of hazing, but the way everyone looked it almost felt real. 

A different intern, Bella, spoke next, “The cryptid of Stark Tower is said the be the ghost of a child who died on a tour here. He is often spotted in the middle of the night fixing problems on projects that were left out.” Okay, now Kate was sure they were pulling her leg. “He is often seen wearing Hello Kitty Pajama pants and a science pun T-shirt and is no older than 13.” Added the final intern, Vinny. Okay, they were just screwing with her; did they really think she was going to fall for this? She rolled her eyes before saying “Do you guys really think I’m that gullible?” 

“This isn’t a joke; everyone here has had at least one experience with the Boy.” Said Kevin who had been mostly ignoring this conversation. “Seriously? You are trying to tell me that one of the most advanced companies in the world is haunted?” “Well, him being a ghost makes the most sense as he seems to be able to get anywhere in the building and never has a badge. The only person who is capable of that is Tony Stark himself.” Added Bella. Now Kate was starting to think that they had all lost their minds, they were science nerds they had to know ghosts weren’t real but she decided to stay quiet.


	2. Bella's Story

Bella was the first to tell her story of the cryptid. “It was 2 am on a Tuesday and I was coming back to the lab after going to the bathroom when I saw movement in the corner of the darkroom. I turned on the lights to find a child standing on the counter going through one of the locked cabinets.”

“I cleared my throat to get the boy's attention. He calmly looked at me waved and went back to what he was doing. At this point, I was starting to get annoyed because who was this kid and why was he so calmly stealing our supplies. So, I said, “You aren’t allowed to be in here and you need permission from the lab director to get supplies from that cabinet.” The boy barely seemed to notice I was talking but said “It's fine, whatever I take will be replaced.” He then leaped off the counter landing on his feet and walked out of the lab and entered Dr. Starks private elevator.”

Kate was still skeptical, “Okay he was probably some intern from another floor who had permission to borrow some supplies and didn’t realize which elevator he used.”

At this, Kevin looked up from his salad and said, “No one can use Dr. Starks elevator, F.R.I.D.A.Y only opens the doors for the Starks.”

“Well does Dr. Stark have a kid?” Kate volunteered.

The other interns looked at her like she had grown a second head, “No, do you not look at the news? He is way too irresponsible to have a child.” Added Claire. 

“Okay, well get on with your story,” Kevin added clearly wanting this conversation to be over.

This caused Bella to sit up straighter and continue, “After the Boy left, I went over to the cabinet he had been in, but I didn’t have access, so I wrote a note to the lab director and decided to call it a night. When I got there the next morning, I had a note from the lab director saying that the Boy had approval and that he knew he was going to take some chemicals. I thought this was weird but ignored it and went back to work. A few days later I was working late again when the Boy came running into our lab leaped with the gracefulness of a ballerina onto the counter opened a different cabinet from last time took a couple of bottles and left without ever saying a word to me.”

“It had been almost a week since I had last seen the Boy when we all heard the elevator doors open and looked up to see none other than the Tony Stark stepping out of the elevator with bright Purple skin. No one knew what to do so we all pretended to be working when he came into the lab and said, “Did any of you see a kid about yay high come in here?” I was panicking because maybe I was right and the kid wasn’t supposed to be there, but I swallowed my fear and raised my hand. Dr. Stark turned to look at me and said, “What did he do?” While trying to ignore the fact that he was purple and showed Dr. Stark the cabinets the Boy and gone in and got him the logs of which chemicals he took. After he had looked at the list for a minute, he told us “Thank you, he made some kind of clear purple dye and put it in my body wash using these chemicals, so I am trying to reverse engineer it, so I am not purple forever.” At that Dr. Stark left the lab and got back into the elevator.”

Telling this story seemed to almost frighten Bella who stopped to take a drink of water and calm down before continuing. “As soon as the elevator doors closed the lab exploded with noise as we all tried to figure out what had happened. We all looked at the list of chemicals but could not figure out how the Boy and done what he did with them. We also tried to figure out how Dr. Stark knew the Boy but after talking about it for about an hour we all had to head home for the night. No one thought we would ever see the boy again because we all still thought he was just a young intern and Dr. Stark would fire him for what he had done. But boy were we wrong.”


	3. Claire's Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got the idea for the Roomba from another fic I read by Blueh called research and disaster. https://archiveofourown.org/works/22827064/chapters/54555277

The next intern to share their story of the Boy was Claire, “It was about a month after the Purple boss incident and we had all thought that the Boy had been fired until one fateful Friday. It was 1 am on a Friday and I was the only one in the lab so when I heard a noise behind me, I almost jumped out of my skin so when I turned around and saw the Boy, I was almost relieved. But I then remember what he had done the month before and so I asked him “What are you doing here?” The Boy looked like he had just realized I was here and said “I was looking for an empty lab that Mr. Stark wasn’t in.” As he turned to leave, I realized he was hugging something to his body that looked almost like a Roomba.”

“A few days later we were all working in the lab together when all of the sudden the elevator doors opened and out came a Roomba that seemed to have a basket attached to it. We all stopped working to stare at this small cleaning vacuum that had just exited the elevator when it started TALKING. “Hiya guys, could one of you take the list out of the basket and put the chemicals on the list in the basket?” It was the Boys voice, but it was coming out of the robot. No one wanted to be the one to walk over to the robot so we all just stood around looking at each other when the robot piped up “It's fine I got permission from the lab head. He signed the list.” I finally decided to look at the list because it seemed no one else would.”

“Sure, enough there was a list in the basket, and it had been signed by the lab director, so I showed it to everyone else in the lab and we decided to fulfill the request. Once we had put all the chemicals into the basket the Boy speaking through the robot thanked us and then the robot spoon around and got back into the elevator.”

“This started to become our new normal. Once or twice a week the basket holding Roomba would exit the elevator with a list, we would put everything in the basket, and then the robot would thank us and leave the same way he came. We were all confused as to why this was happening but didn’t want to upset the Boy because he was clearly very powerful if he didn’t get fired for dying the boss purple.”

“After about six weeks of this happening Mr. Stark came into our lab and asked us about all of the chemicals we were using. No one knew what to say, we thought he knew that the Boy was taking them. So, after a minute of panicked silence, I explained what had been happening. Mr. Stark just laughed shook his head and mumbled something about Underoos and left. After that day, the Roomba stopped coming down, but the chemicals kept going missing and we wanted to find out more about the Boy, so we set up a camera facing the elevators and one towards the cabinets.”

“After about a week we caught the Boy on camera for the first time, he was wearing Hello Kitty Pajama pants and a shirt with a science pun on it. We only caught him on the camera by the cabinets and not the one by the elevators and to make things even weirder he was walking on the ceiling. We decided to set up a camera by the stairs because all though very few people used the stairs it might be possible. After another week had passed, we caught the Boy with the camera on the cabinets but neither the camera by the stairs or the one by the elevator.” 

“This is when we came up with the hypothesis that he was a ghost because he seemed to just appear in the lab and then leave by the elevator. We were never able to catch him entering the floor or the room. Even when we put a camera on the lab door we still never caught him entering only leaving.”


	4. Vinny's Story

Vinny decides that it is his turn to tell his story, so he starts, “It was a Sunday in around noon when I came in to get some work done while I had some time. But as soon as I got off of the elevator, I knew something was wrong. The lab lights were all turned on which is super weird because Bella and I are the only ones who really come in on the weekends and she was out sick.”

“When I entered the lab there was a small boy wearing a t-shirt that was three sizes too big, no shoes and hello kitty pants, sitting at my station using my computer to write some kind of code. I froze in the doorway and stared at the boy for a minute before he seemed to notice me without even turning around and said “Oh Hi!! Is this your station? I’m almost done then I will get out of your hair.” He didn’t wait for me to respond just kept typing away at whatever he was working on.”

“It took me another minute to get my bearings before I spoke up, “You can’t be on that computer, that is only for biomedical interns, more specifically me.” “Oh, it's fine, you won’t get in trouble for me using this computer, I signed in as me.” I had no idea how this child had login codes to our system but when I looked closer, I could see the computer background and realized it was a drawing of Spiderman’s suit and I knew it wasn’t my background. After about thirty seconds the boy seemed satisfied with his code so he logged out of my computer turned it off got up and left the room.”

“A few days later we were all in the cafeteria eating lunch with a few other interns from other departments when one of them told us that they heard a rumor that every time Mr. Stark entered a room Iron Man by Black Sabbath started blasting over F.R.I.D.A.Y’s system. We all laughed about it because we thought it was some silly joke started to mess with the interns because no one could hack F.R.I.D.A.Y and moved on with our day. A few hours after lunch we were all in the lab working when the elevator opened and out stepped Mr. Stark. He walked into our lab and as soon as his foot crossed the threshold, we all heard,”

I am iron man  
Has he lost his mind?  
Can he see or is he blind?  
Can he walk at all  
Or if he moves will he fall?

“We all stood there frozen not knowing what to do because apparently the unhackable AI system that runs this building had been hacked. Mr. Stark looked around the room for a moment before saying “Is station 318 in this lab?” 318 is my station so I started to panic and thought back to when the Boy had used my computer, I was so scared I couldn’t even speak so Kevin spoke up and told Mr. Stark that it was and pointed out which one.” Mr. Stark walked over to me and asked, “Is this your station?” I finally felt like I could breathe enough to speak and told him it was. After looking at me for a second, probably because I looked like I was about to faint he said, “There is no reason to freak out, I know you didn’t do this” as he spoke he waved his hand towards the ceiling where F.R.I.D.A.Y’s speakers are. He then walked over to my station and logged in as admin, after messing with it for a few minutes and said, “There we go, all should be fixed.” After logging out of the computer he got up and walked over to the door, he slowly stepped out of the room and no music started he smirked and walked back into his elevator saying, “That kid thought he could hide the source computer from ME I’m Tony Fucking Stark.”


	5. Kevin's Story

The only intern that has not told a story is Kevin, so they all look to him. “My story of the Boy started at a meeting with all of the head interns, we were talking about some issues the R & D department was having when the Boy walked into the room. We all stopped talking and looked at him, but he said, “It's fine, keep going pretend I’m not even here.” So, after a moment of shock, we resumed talking.”

“The head intern from R & D was showing us some problem code but none of us could find the problem. That is when the boy piped up “The issue is the IF statement in line 243, it doesn’t have an end curly bracket.” We all turned at looked at him except for the R & D intern who said “He’s right, that was the problem. Damn, I had been looking at this all day. Thanks, kid.” “No problem!” After that, the Boy went back to quietly sitting in the back of the room for the rest of the meeting only speaking to fix issues people were having.”

“Every week when we had a meeting the Boy would show up, sit in the corner silently, and only speak to solve all of our issues. One week some of us were talking during lunch and one of the others mentioned that the Boy never had a badge on. We all thought back to every time we had seen the boy and they were right he never wears a badge, which should mean that he can’t get anywhere in the building, but he seems to have unlimited access.”

“After we realized that we started asking around if anyone knew him, but no one seemed to know who he was. Some people told us stories about the Boy, but no one ever saw him with a badge or knew where he worked or who he was.”

“This went on for months, every meeting he would show up solve all of our problems, and then leave never wearing a badge and never telling us who he was. After two months of this, we created the Discord server where we all post about sightings of the Boy. After a month of the Discord server being used, we realized that the Boy was never seen during school hours only after school or on the weekends. We also noticed that he was seen more when Tony Stark was out of the building or in meetings. So, we concluded that he was school-aged when he died and kept to his old schedule and that he normally haunted Mr. Stark but when he was unavailable, he visited us.”

“Through the Discord server, I learned of many sightings, most of which were late at night when most people weren’t in the building. One girl swears she saw him walking on the ceiling of her lab at 2 AM. Another says that she saw him in her lab fixing code on her bosses’ computer. There is no way to verify these stories so we just have to hope that no one lies.”


	6. Kate Meets the Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter. I promise the next one will be longer.

About a month after Kate started at Stark Industries, she had been approved to start her own project. She had been working on the same equation every free moment she had in the last week but was still struggling with it. At around 3 AM one night she decided to take a break and to walk around the labs on that floor for a bit. She ran into a few other interns and some scientists, so it took her about 20 minutes to get back to her lab. When she opened the door to the lab, she saw a small figure standing in front of the whiteboard she had her equation on. 

“Is this your project?” The Boy asked without even looking away.

“Uh uh… Y-yeah.”

“You were missing the negative sign in this parenthesis. I fixed it and that should fix the final answer.”

“Oh. Um. Thanks.”

“Yeah, sure it’s not a big deal. I was bored with my project and decided to take a walk when I saw this.”

“I have been working on that for the last week and couldn’t figure out what was wrong.”

“Well, sometimes it just takes a fresh pair of eyes. I should be heading back upstairs. Have a nice night!” He waved at her a brushed past her to get out of the door. She stood in the doorway for another minute before she was able to gather herself enough to enter the lab and close the door behind her. She sat at her station and tried to figure out what the hell had just happened for another hour before she finally decided to go home and get some sleep.

The next day as soon as she entered the lab, she announced “I met the Boy last night.”

“Did you put it in the Discord???” Kevin asked. He ran the Discord and always made sure sightings were added.

“Not yet it happened at 3 AM last night.”

“Tell us the story!!” Bella asked practically jumping up and down.

“It was 3 AM and I decided to take a break, so I walked around the floor and talked to a couple of people. But when I got back to the lab someone was standing in front of my whiteboard. He didn’t even turn around but asked if it was my project. I didn’t know what to do so I told him it was. He told me he fixed the problem and that he had to be leaving. Once I collected myself enough to move, I looked at the board and he had fixed the problem I had been staring at for the last week.”

“So not only is this child some kind of prank master he is also a genius,” Vinny added before going back to his work. 

“Apparently. We had all looked at that problem and couldn’t find the issue.” Bella added.


End file.
